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ROLLERS
Yorkshire CCC’s ACADEMY
Head Groundsman, Anthony Asquith, talks about his pre-s
season maintenance regime
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Here at the Yorkshire CCC Academy I’ve got a busy season with fixtures from the academy sides, Yorkshire women’s XI - not to mention the MCC, Leeds and Bradford University teams.
Three squares, totalling thirty two pitches and two outfields keep me very busy during the summer, but it’s the nature of the beast in cricket I'm afraid.
All squares are different in construction: -
• The main square has 5” of Ongar laid over excellent indigenous subsoil material.
SPORTS TURF CONTRACTORS
• Similarly, the second square has 2” of Ongar on top of the same indigenous subsoil.
• The practice nets are on a perched water table type construction with a gravel raft, sand binding layer and Ongar material.
With the net areas, we have been monitoring just how they behave differently to the squares. We felt the pitches would perform well as drying is more comprehensive - the blinding layer induces sub surface movement, resulting in a more coherent structure.
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The net areas, even in the first season of play last year, dried out too quickly. Hydrating the profile has been a problem as the colloidal clay has a memory and cracks during shrinkage in the
same place. This results in the ‘bulli’ (soil) being very difficult to re-wet, any moisture applied runs down the cracks into the gravel raft.
With this problem in mind, I have purchased several flat cover sheets to slow down the rate of drying, thereby enabling any water to work its way down the structure. This avoids other problems such as moisture breaks etc.
I use the covers during high evapotranspiration periods i.e. 10am-5pm, but remove them once these intense periods have gone. The way the dominant clay behaves is to shrink and swell and, upon dehydration, platelets are disturbed and separated before shrinking back. It is this process that causes cracking as bulk density increases.
At the moment I am preparing three wickets - two for practice and one for my first fixture which, as I write, will be on 11th April. After this, it is all systems go! My pitch preparations commence fourteen days before the fixture, enabling me to judge the level of maintenance required.
I prefer to dry wickets out sooner rather than later and, if for example my fixture is on Saturday, I like to be done and dusted on Thursday, or at the very latest Friday morning. This gives me some breathing space and allows an extra day to deal with any unforseen problems. If wickets are ready early you can easily ‘hold them’ by using sheets, mobiles or even coconut matting.
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I am confident in the dominant clay, as during drying (and after the effects of rolling) it allows greater
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